Thursday Reads
Posted: August 10, 2017 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics | Tags: Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump, Jim Sciutto, Kim Jong Un, Mitch McConnell, no-knock FBI raid, North Korea, Paul Manafort, Sebastian Gorka, Trump inflatable chicken, White House chaos 46 Comments
An inflatable chicken meant to resemble President Trump on the Ellipse, just south of the White House, on Wednesday. Credit Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/us/politics/trump-giant-inflatable-chicken.html
Good Afternoon!!
Where to begin? We’re still seeing the fallout from the news that broke yesterday about the late July predawn raid on Paul Manafort’s Virginia home, Trump is threatening war with North Korea and feuding with Mitch McConnell, and more info is coming out about the latest frightening climate change report, and the White House is just as chaotic as ever despite John Kelly’s efforts. I have no doubt that more crazy news will break before I finish this post.
I’ll start with the Manafort raid followup. First, it was a “no-knock” raid according to Jim Sciutto of CNN.
That means that the Special Counsel convinced a judge that Manafort might destroy evidence if he knew the FBI was at his front door. I guess it also means the FBI broke down his door. That’s huge.
From Just Security: FBI Search of Paul Manafort’s Home: What Does It Really Mean?
Mueller’s use of a search warrant tells us that he was able to establish on the basis of evidence, and to the satisfaction of a United States Magistrate-Judge, that there was probable cause to believe that evidence of a specific crime or crimes existed in the location to be searched. That standard is significantly higher than what is required to obtain a grand jury subpoena, which can be used to obtain any evidence that a grand jury (under the direction of a prosecutor) decides will be helpful to their investigation. Mueller’s resort to a search warrant shows, therefore, that his investigation has advanced, has identified specific potential crimes, and is zeroing in on key evidence. Since it was Manafort’s house that was searched, it is likely that he is implicated in the crimes, but that is not necessarily the case. Further, it should be clear that just because Mueller has now reached this stage in the investigation, it does not necessarily mean that Manafort or anybody else will be ultimately charged with crimes.
Now why did Mueller use a search warrant instead of a subpoena, particularly since Manafort’s attorney says that they have been cooperating with the investigation all along? I can think of four possible reasons for Mueller’s move (none of which are mutually exclusive).
Read the reasons at the link. Following the revelation of the raid, journalists and twitter users looked at the timeline of events and found some interesting Trump connections.
Think Progress: Trump called for acting FBI director’s firing hours after FBI agents raided Paul Manafort’s home.
In light of the news about the raid of Manafort’s home, Trump’s tweets on the day of July 26 are of renewed interest. That was the day Trump abruptly posted a string of tweets announcing “that the United States government will not accept or allow [t]ransgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” Last Friday, Politico reported that Trump’s declaration stunned White House and Department of Defense lawyers who had warned him against such a ban.
But more directly of interest are factually inaccurate tweets Trump posted later that day asking why Attorney General Jeff Sessions hadn’t moved to replace then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
This morning, Fox News reported more evidence that Trump likely knew about the raid on the morning it happened: Trump lawyer slams special counsel for ‘gross abuse’ in Manafort raid, challenges warrant.
A top lawyer for President Trump slammed the special counsel’s office over the FBI raid of former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s Virginia home, accusing investigators of committing a “gross abuse of the judicial process” for the sake of “shock value” – and employing tactics normally seen “in Russia not America.”
Trump attorney John Dowd leveled the complaints in an email sent to a Wall Street Journal reporter who wrote about the Manafort raid. The email was obtained by Fox News.
The email reflects Trump’s legal team moving to protect the president, amid speculation that the raid could be part of a broader effort to squeeze Manafort for information on Trump.
Dowd, in his note, questioned the validity of the search warrant itself, calling it an “extraordinary invasion of privacy.” Dowd said Manafort already was looking to cooperate with congressional committees and said the special counsel never requested the materials from Manafort.
If Manafort informed Trump’s lawyers about the raid, they probably told Trump himself.
More on Mueller’s investigation of Manafort, and likely efforts to get him to flip on Trump:
Politico: Feds sought cooperation from Manafort’s son-in-law.
Federal investigators sought cooperation from Paul Manafort’s son-in-law in an effort to increase pressure on President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, according to three people familiar with the probe.Investigators approached Jeffrey Yohai, who has partnered in business deals with Manafort, earlier this summer, setting off “real waves” in Manafort’s orbit, one of these people said. Another of these people said investigators are trying to get “into Manafort’s head.”
Manafort, who is a focus of the broad federal and congressional investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, is also under investigation for his business and real estate transactions, including some that involve Yohai.
That probe has accelerated in recent weeks, according to one of the people familiar with it….
It is unclear if investigators have secured cooperation from Yohai, who also hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing. A lawyer for Yohai didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Bloomberg: With Bank Subpoenas, Mueller Turns Up the Heat on Manafort.
Mueller’s team of investigators has sent subpoenas in recent weeks from a Washington grand jury to global banks for account information and records of transactions involving Manafort and some of his companies, as well as those of a long-time business partner, Rick Gates, according to people familiar with the matter.
The special counsel has also reached out to other business associates, including Manafort’s son-in-law and a Ukrainian oligarch, according to one of the people. Those efforts were characterized as an apparent attempt to gain information that could be used to squeeze Manafort, or force him to be more helpful to prosecutors.
Manafort’s apartment building in Virginia
As prosecutors gather many years of information about his financial affairs, Manafort could be dragged deeper into any number of legal disputes. He has a history of doing business with oligarchs and politicians in Ukraine and Russia that predates his political work for Trump, with payments routed through foreign banks and investments in U.S. real estate….
Part of the reason Manafort is getting intense early scrutiny is that Mueller is drawing on investigations that were well underway, including one by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, when he was appointed in May.
With prosecutors combing through his financial life, the 68-year-old has been toeing a fine line, cooperating with congressional requests for information about the campaign, and insisting he has nothing to hide from Mueller’s team of prosecutors who are delving into his past. Privately, his supporters question Mueller’s work to unearth conduct with no apparent connection to the 2016 election.
North Korea appears to be winning the war of words with Trump.
The Atlantic: North Korea Answers Trump’s Vague Threats With Specific Ones.
President Trump seemed to draw a red line Tuesday when he warned North Korea that continued threats against the United States would be met with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” The next day, North Korea crossed it.
Or at least it announced, in unusually specific terms, how it could. The country’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday night issued a statement that said the North is “seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets in order to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.” The statement, citing the North’s Strategic Rocket Forces head General Kim Rak Gyom, added that the plan would be finished by mid-August before going to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for approval.
“Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him,” the general said, in apparent reference to Trump, whose ultimatum he described as a “load of nonsense.”
The announcement, coming a day after the North threatened Guam in vaguer terms, is stunning not only as an escalation, but also for the level of detail with which it describes the proposed strike. The statement spells out the number of intermediate-range ballistic missiles that would be involved (four), how far they would fly (approximately 2,085 miles), their exact flight path (they would traverse the three Japanese prefectures of Shimane, Hiroshima, and Koichi), plus how long all of this would take (about 20 minutes), and the earliest the plan would be ready (mid-August, so, conservatively, within a few days). And it takes care to specify that the end point of the missiles is not Guam itself, but the waters off its eastern coast (18 to 25 miles off, to be exact).
Jeffrey Lewis at Foreign Policy: The Game Is Over and North Korea Has Won.
The Washington Post reported yesterday that North Korea has a large stockpile of compact nuclear weapons that can arm the country’s missiles, including its new intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of hitting the United States. That’s another way of saying: game over.
Also: I told you so.
There are really two assessments in the Post’s report. One, dated July 28, is that the intelligence community — not just the Defense Intelligence Agency, contrary to what you may have heard — “assesses North Korea has produced nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery, to include delivery by ICBM-class missiles.” The other assessment, published earlier in July, stated that North Korea had 60 nuclear weapons — higher than the estimates usually given in the press. Put them together, though, and its pretty clear that the window for denuclearizing North Korea, by diplomacy or by force, has closed.
These judgments are front-page news, but only because we’ve been living in collective denial. Both intelligence assessments are consistent with what the North Koreans have been saying for some time, for reasons I outlined in a column here at Foreign Policy immediately after the September 2016 nuclear test titled, “North Korea’s Nuke Program Is Way More Sophisticated Than You Think: This is now a serious nuclear arsenal that threatens the region and, soon, the continental United States.”
Continue reading at Foreign Policy.
On the Trump-McConnell spat:
Business Insider: Trump’s feud with Mitch McConnell ‘is breathtaking in its dysfunctionality.’
A burgeoning feud between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could have significant ramifications for the GOP’s once-ambitious policy agenda.
Analysts say the war of words could be another stumbling block for various Republican plans after limited success in their first seven months of power in Washington.
“The Trump/McConnell war of words has zero upside for the GOP agenda and is potentially limit-down,” Chris Krueger, an analyst at Cowen Washington Research Group. “It is breathtaking in its dysfunctionality.”
Isaac Boltansky, a political analyst at the research firm Compass Point, told Business Insider that the words are a stark example of the divide that exists between the two.
“I think the state of political rhetoric is concerning for both the GOP’s legislative agenda and the fiscal deadlines in September,” Isaac Boltansky, a political analyst at the research firm Compass Point, told Business Insider. “Trump and McConnell are linchpins in the legislative process, and these comments suggest a deep divide in both tone and substance.”The cracks are starting to show at a critical time for the GOP agenda, as necessary deadlines and a massive tax reform fight loom on the horizon.
Read more at the BI link.
White House Insanity Updates
New York Magazine: Sebastian Gorka Thinks the Minnesota Mosque Attack May Have Been a False Flag.
In the early morning hours of August 5, someone hurled an improvised explosive device at a mosque in Bloomington, Minnesota. None of the roughly 20 early morning worshippers were injured, but the blast broke windows and began a small fire, filling the building with smoke. The mosque’s executive director told a local TV station that “one of our congregation members came out immediately and he saw a truck fleeing from the parking lot, running at very high speed.” The FBI is investigating; no arrests have been made. On Sunday, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton called the attack “an act of terrorism.”
But the response from the Trump administration has been predictable yet disturbing: almost complete silence. President Trump has not issued a statement or tweeted about the Minnesota attack, preferring to direct his attention to other pressing matters, like Senator Richard Blumenthal’s Vietnam record. (The Department of Homeland Security did issue a strong statement condemning the attack.)
In a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC, Nazi-ish quasi–White House adviser Sebastian Gorka put forth a bizarre justification for the radio silence: The attack, you see, may have been perpetrated by the left.
“There’s a great rule: All initial reports are false,” Gorka said. (Editor’s note: This is a terrible rule.) “You have to check them; you have to find out who the perpetrators are,” Gorka continued. “We’ve had a series of crimes committed — alleged hate crimes by right-wing individuals in the last six months — that turned out to actually have been propagated by the left. So let’s wait and see, let’s allow the local authorities to provide their assessments, and then the White House will make its comments.” Responding to Stephanie Ruhle’s assertion that Trump had no problem immediately commenting on a London terror attack in June, Gorka countered that it was obvious in that case who the perpetrators were — ignoring the fact that Trump tweeted out a Drudge Report story written before any facts were known. Ruhle also made the eminently reasonable point that “you don’t have to make a statement about who did it, but you can make a public statement about how terrible it would be to attack a building of worship.” “That’s fine,” Gorka responded unconvincingly. “And I’m sure the president will do that.”
Anthony Scaramucci is no longer in the White House, but he’s still making news. The Washington Post: The Mooch as Monica Lewinsky? Scaramucci’s saga keeps getting stranger.
Anthony Scaramucci keeps complaining about the interview that cost him his job as White House communications director. And in doing so, he keeps betraying how amateur it was that the White House ever hired him.
When the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza first reported on Scaramucci’s vulgar comments about his then-White House colleagues two weeks ago, Scaramucci said he would tone down the language. He then apparently decided to get a little more combative, suggesting the interview wasn’t meant to be published and that a fellow Italian American like Lizza should have known he was just B.S.-ing.
And now that Lizza published additional comments from the interview Wednesday, Scaramucci is trying a new tack: Accusing Lizza of recording him without his knowledge by comparing him to a figure from the Bill Clinton sex scandal, Linda Tripp.
Go to the WaPo to read the whole ridiculous story.
I’ll get to the climate change news in the comment thread. This post is way too long.
What else is happening? What stories are you following today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
The Boston Globe: Climate change will hit New England hard, report says.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Ga. officials warn of local impacts of climate change after report publicized.
We’re under the gun too. They let it go on too long.
Released right as the orange bomb pop killed the EPA site.
Click to access climate-change-la.pdf
Thank you for posting this link BB – I wouldn’t have seen that article otherwise.
Interesting they think we’ll be wet here in ATL and North GA but the south will be drought-ridden. All the farming is south.
Twitter went wild yesterday over Nina Turner’s bizarre doughnut freakout.
Buzzfeed: Our Revolution Takes Issue With The “Dictatorial,” “Arrogant,” “Pompous” DNC.
If she wants avocado toast and smoked salmon, maybe she should switch to the Repubs. She’s not that far away. Better yet, she & Sanders and their ilk can work on growing their own damn party.
Well said.
She and rest of that crowd can’t get kicked to the curb fast enough for me.
I hope that Ariana Grande licked all those donuts before they were passed around.
I hate to admit this, but my immediate reaction to that pic was “ZOMG! !!eleventy!!”
(What wholewheat cheerios the BSers are.)
She really has lost it big time.
Must say I agree with that NK general. So does most of the rest of the world I’ll bet.
When you’ve purposely left yourself with few diplomatic resources:
He thinks all he needs is a nasty, threatening tweet and all is solved.
Hey, it always worked as CEO of privately owned LLCs. And we all know the country is nothing but a big business, right?
Haha – Trump’s Alma Mater, Wharton School of Business just did a study and found that Trump’s immigration plans will cost about 5 million jobs. Less Growth, and Less Jobs. He’s pissed. Fake study, don’t you know!
Trump just threatened North Korea again, via MSNBC
Great.
Given that we’re dealing with two chest-thumping baboonoids, there really is a chance somebody is going to start throwing
rocksnukes.Somebody needs to tell that orange mess it’ll affect his stock portfolio. So far, that’s the only thing that seems to work to make him shut up.
His dumbass fire and fury speech DID rattle the markets.
quixote – you’re too kind. Baboonoids be flinging monkey-poo.
This morning it had little affect…..maybe as the day wears on.
Because they aren’t taking him seriously. They should.
For sure, they aren’t taking it serious. Heard someone say no one is talking about going to war! Yep.
The problem is the stock market isn’t being affected by his thumping.
It’s about to get it. There are really weird things going on in the bond market right now and really weird things in the bond market are usually a precursor to YUGE bigly correction.
Jesus, Aphrodite & Freya! Can’t we just ship him off to N Korea? Or have the generals throw him in the brig?
No, we can’t just yet Luna. Boyz take pissing contests very 😳 unfortunately these two aren’t bright enough to know how dangerous this one can be.
WaPo:
More drama in Trumpland: Gorka publicly shuns Tillerson’s effort to scale back North Korea red line
Response from North Korea:
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I know this shouldn’t be funny – but it’s like Baghdad Bob all over again. DPRK are winning the insult contest IMO.
It’s hilarious. They’re out-Trumping Trump.
You know that’s a fake account, right?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-men-behind-the-infamous-fake-north-korean-twitter-account
kewl .. that’s some high level satire right there
WaPo: Trump escalates rhetoric on threat from North Korea
Gosh. Look where we’ve arrived … back to my life in first grade ducking and covering!!!
Don’t forget, Dak. Whatever you do, don’t look at the mushroom cloud.
Russian Cyberattack Targeted Elections Vendor Tied To Voting Day Disruptions
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/10/542634370/russian-cyberattack-targeted-elections-vendor-tied-to-voting-day-disruptions
CNN severs ties with Jeffrey Lord
http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/10/media/jeffrey-lord-cnn-ties/index.html
Maybe he’ll flee to a more appropriate century …
Finally. He’s the one that raises my husband’s blood pressure sky high.
The new status quo:
You did say this was an open thread, right? The Persiads are on this weekend, but I’m doing Western NC a favor and staying home, given that the last two years I was out stalking them on the Parkway, it was thoroughly clouded over.
There have been several eclipse related events around this here tourist town. In one of them this evening, an attendee asked the University of North Carolina Asheville presenter, essentially, “How do you know all this?” His (too short) answer: math. Her question was reasonable. To anyone not familiar with higher mathematics, it could have come across as opinion.
This is a pristine example of a teachable moment. How do people (i.e. all us humans) know with any certainty when something in the future is going to happen, or something in the present, but not observable (like the discoveries of Neptune and Pluto)? You can show how mathematics did that.
Language is used everyday, for everyone. Girls are good at it – so what. Only certain people (boys?) have a need for math – engines, drafting, shooting things. Brian Butterworth, inter alia, documented that math, like any other human skill, is a matter of practice.
It would be fantastic if there were some way to bring home to interested humans (girls? women?) that mathematics, the product of thousands of continuous years of human experience, across literally every major culture on this earth, got us a handle on our local solar eclipse.
Perseids! Thanks for the reminder. Am planning a backpack this weekend — hope the night is clear.
Link from Astronomy Pic of the Day to a photo and explanatory text: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170810.html
I’ll stay home twice, just in case :>